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User blog:Reaper with no name/Slattern's Height: An Exercise In Extrapolation
This is another one of those cases where I started typing up a reply to a forum thread, and then realized halfway through that it deserved an entry in Reaper's Blog 4 Thinkin'. : Pythor9449 wrote: There is NO way that Slattern is 596 ft tall. If he was that tall, Striker and Gipsy would have looked tiny next to him. Extrapolation Time! Striker's 250 foot height and Gipsy Danger's 260 feet are between 40-45% of Slattern's supposed 596 feet. Therefore, we would expect that Slattern, when standing straight up, would be roughly twice the size of Striker or Gipsy. Before we can do anything else, we need to answer an important question: Do Striker's angel wings count in that height? To answer this question, we turn to "TakingAWalk.png": It might be my imagination, but Striker seems to be bending over a little more than Gipsy. Then again, Gipsy's legs might be a little further apart (which would reduce height slightly more). But on the other hand, since Striker is supposed to be on Gipsy's left in that scene, that means Gipsy is slightly closer to the camera, which would make Gipsy appear larger in relative terms, and would probably have more effect than either of the previous factors. The point is, the tips of Striker's angel wings clearly appear much taller than Gipsy, while Striker itself appears shorter. Since Gipsy is considered taller than Striker, we can therefore conclude that the angel wings are not considered part of Striker's height. This conclusion is also supported by official artwork. So with that issue out of the way, we can move on. This was the closest thing I could find to a shot of both Striker and Slattern standing straight up. Not only is Slattern easily twice the size of Striker Eureka here, but he doesn't even fully fit in the image. Of course, Striker Eureka is bending over. So, assuming that I have similar proportions, if I bend over in a similar way and take measurements, I can figure out roughly how much height Striker Eureka would expect to lose. As it turns out, the answer is a little less than a third. It may not be obvious in "SlatternIsTall.png", but Slattern is actually on his knees there (Slattern has a reverse knee configuration). How much height does he lose from that? His inhuman proportions prevent me from using myself as a benchmark, so we'll have to go to an image. Well, by using my trusty tape measure to measure Slattern's height from leg to shoulders, then shoulders to head, and adding them together (I have to do them separately since they go in different directions, but it turned out to not make much difference), I can get a number for Slattern's overall height. I can then measure the height of Slattern's leg up to his knee and compare the numbers. In my case, they were 5 inches and 1 inch. Your results would likely vary (given different monitors and amplification levels), but it's the relationship that matters, not the actual numbers (and those would remain constant). From this, I conclude that about 20% of Slattern's height is in his legs below his knees. So, let's look at the second image again. From my extrapolations of my own body, I conclude that Striker Eureka is slightly less than 50% taller than he appears here. Meanwhile, from my extrapolations of the aptly-named "ExtrapolationImage.png" I conclude that Slattern is 25% taller than he appears here (even more, in fact, since some of his head isn't in the image and is therefore not counted). Given that Slattern appears to be at least twice as tall as Striker in the image, that means that if they were both standing tall, that extra 25% would translate to about the same amount of extra height as Striker's extra 50%. But, let's not forget that not all of Slattern's head fits into the image. Moreover, Striker is closer to the camera (and so appears larger to us than he is), so Slattern is actually even taller relative to Striker Eureka than "SlatternIsTall.png" indicates. Slattern's 596 feet of height is "estimated", and may therefore be off by a few dozen feet in either direction (though 596 is oddly specific for an estimate). But that doesn't change the fact that Slattern is, to put it bluntly, ludicrously tall. 596 feet is an easily believable height for this behemoth. In fact, Slattern is so large that it appears to have actually been a challenge for del Toro to properly depict him without zooming out so far that detail was lost. In the course of trying to find shots for my extrapolations, I found that in almost every shot of Slattern, he is either horizontal or bending over to ridiculous degrees so that he could fit in the shot without crowding out the Jaegers. "SlatternIsTall.png" is probably the only time his neck was actually fully extended vertically. At all other times, he keeps his head as low as possible. He also often has his legs bent. Heck, even when fully horizontal, his torso's height is still about the same as Striker Eureka's, as "HorizontalSlattern.png" shows: Imagine being so big that even when lying on your belly you were still nearly half the height of a full-grown man. That is how huge Slattern is compared to a Jaeger. Category:Blog posts